Date Unknown
All our lives we saw them, the ones who didn’t belong.
They flickered in and out of our realm, sometimes gray, sometimes vivid and
vocal. They never stayed long, momentary connections or glimpses out of the
corners of our eyes. But now they are gone for good, and we don’t know why.
Something went awry and they are gone, our sister worlds that used to touch
ours.
This began as all things do, far back into the past. A
chain of events led us to this moment here and now, as I stand in the Silent
world. In one of the Silent worlds.
Are we the only one left? The ones above me won’t say,
and I fear this means the answer is yes.
The moment I am sure my feet are firmly on the ground,
I touch my ear with my middle finger, pressing against the nodule of metal
clipped there. My microphone, the two-way relay between myself and my team back
in our world.
“Receiver. Do I come through?”
For a moment, nothing but chilling Silence in my head,
echoed by the reality I currently inhabit. Then, the voice of my Receiver
filters through our connection.
“You come through, B-9412. What do you wish to report?
Was there a problem with transfer?”
The B stands for Broadcaster. As for the numbers, I don’t
know, though I certainly have a theory. I feel that all we Broadcasters have
our theories, though I never met any of the others before to confirm this.
For myself, I believe our numbers correspond with the
numbers of the Silent universes available to walk through.
The team consists only of Receiver, Command, Monitor,
and myself. I don’t know their real names, cannot identify them on sight. I cannot
even say what gender most of them are, though Receiver seems decidedly male
when he speaks.
“I have within my sight a sign which displays the name
of my current location. That location is…”
“Unimportant.”
I pause. The rate at which our sister worlds went Silent
on us varied due to the subtle differences between us, but the locations
usually didn’t change. However, sometimes they did. I should confirm this with
Receiver, especially since I am standing right in front of the sign.
“Monitor has already logged the location. We can see
it,” Receiver says, referring to the cameras implanted in my eyes, behind my
corneas.
To confirm everything, to have it recorded in as many
ways as possible, is the standard operating procedure that has been ground into
my mind over and over again through months of training simulations.
However, I’m not questioning Receiver’s judgment. Yet
another thing I learned during training is that my superiors are always right.
Always.
“Understood. I will continue on and if I notice
anything else, I will bring it to your attention.”
“We’ll be watching,” a new voice replies. High-pitched
and crisp, this one belongs to the person known as Monitor. Monitor doesn’t
often speak but when he does, it sends a chill down my spine. I don’t trust
him.
Dropping my hand, I just stand and look at the sign.
Trenton, the sign says. Scorch marks obscure the bottom half of the wooden
surface, devouring what might have been written there.
. I shake my head and turn away to look out at the
rest of the town. I stand in a patch of grass along the side of a cracked road.
Dirt brims in the fractures and weeds root within, rising upward rather than spreading
out. Faint birdsong carries over from the distance, across a large, empty plain
of grass which must have been a park at one point, though long since fallen
into disarray.
On this side of the street there are many small
buildings, all of them collapsed. Large buildings line the opposite side, similarly
buckled in upon themselves as if they couldn’t take the strain of existence.
Something terrible came this way, wreaking havoc upon the little town.
I pull in a deep breath and try to rid myself of the
chill inside me by focusing on the chill outside. A sharp, dry wind blows
through the town, rustling through the grass and stirring the weeds. The
weather is the same as on the other side, the onset of autumn.
On the opposite end of the empty park is a
neighborhood, rows of houses separated by lines of trees. The leaves have fully
turned color, mostly brown and dirty gold with a scattering of crimson.
I must discover what caused this Silence. There are so
many things that can lead to the destruction of a world. As we are the last
left, we must avoid them all. To that end, I will record as much of this world
as I can. Even the most insignificant details may become important at a later
date. I will never know. Monitor will review the data and decide for themselves.
I am only a walking camera.
I will patrol up and down the streets from the point
where I have Entered, performing quick and thorough searches of each building
as I am able. I am not to linger but I must scan smoothly and completely so
that Monitor can accurately assess the video feed relayed to them. This journey
will take hours, perhaps years; there is no way of knowing when I am done until
I am told so.
My survival depends on supplies sent to me through
Entryways at scheduled times. No scavenging. No disturbing the records.
There are many like me. But here, I am alone.
I set out up the street, walking past the little
houses. Many of them are impassible, the doors blocked by avalanches of rotting
wood and brick rubble. The ones that I can enter soon form the picture that
they are not homes at all, but stores. Shelving remnants burdened by destroyed
goods fill the interiors, though for the most part there is little of value.
When this world ended, the looters and survivalists made their move to take
what they could.
One store is filled entirely with broken glass,
shattered bottles. The smell is rank but musty and very, very old.
Knotted tangles of obliterated metal block the entire
front of what used to be a refill station for automobiles. There must have been
an explosion, decimating the structure.
Past the station, a broad expanse of road leads to the
left and right for an eternity. I follow the road only long enough to reach the
next neighborhood street where individual patches of yard surround husks of
houses. Once separated, now united in the unnatural quiet that blankets them.
Fallen debris blocks me from many of the homes.
However, I occasionally manage to gain access to catch a glimpse of the past,
mainly in the form of mementos: a book tossed into a corner, the cover bleached
from sunlight but undamaged; an empty birdcage, the bars rusting.
Furniture is a common feature, torn couches and lamps scattered
everywhere. Tables and chairs and shelves both large and small, most of them
broken. Vegetation invades buildings wherever possible. Ivy climbs down the
walls. Trees burst up through the floors.
Outside, leaves swirl around my boots, drifting down
from above, disturbed by the fierce wind. Squirrels leap through the canopy,
visible when they bound across bare branches.
Clouds the color of charcoal obscure the sky, allowing
none of the true color to show through. I stop and look up as a maple leaf
brushes past my shoulder, wondering what that color might be. Blue, or gray
with deathly ashes and smog?
Static bursts in my ear and I touch my microphone.
“Yes?”
“Keep your eyes on the ground. The sky doesn’t
matter.”
Monitor’s reprimand forces my head down. If I mess up
here, I will be pulled out. My whole life I worked towards this and I will not
have it end in failure.
But I don’t say that out loud.
“Understood.”
I get moving again. So far, this world is very much
like my own, the differences so slight that they might be missed if a person
wasn’t looking for them. A few forgotten vehicles lie about, decaying, rounder
than the ones I am used to. The buildings stretch taller, cant asymmetrical to
one side. I like that.
Finishing my patrol of the first street, I head back
up the next, finding much of the same. No vehicles this time and the
destruction is muted, but otherwise nothing changes. I expected this and it
doesn’t bother me. Much of this journey will be similar.
I pass by the park again after going down the third
street and notice this time that the weeds gather in some places into enormous
clumps. That is odd and will warrant searching, but for now I move to the
fourth street. More of the same, but there something new awaits me halfway down
the fifth.
Several deer amble across the road, with quivering
black muzzles and white tails that flick around as they walk. The hooves are
dainty and small, making no sound as the animals cross the concrete. Though each
one looks in my direction, they hardly seem to care that I am here.
As soon as they safely cross the street, more appear
from behind cover. These two are smaller, with a gangliness that suggests they
haven’t fully grown into their own bodies yet. After the pair comes another,
this one as red as a winter sunset, snowflakes streaming across his flanks. Binging
up the rear is a stag with a thick scruff of fur around his neck. His antlers
are surprisingly small for a creature so impressive, which suggests that he too
had much growing to do.
Static crackles in my ear. “I hear you,” I say.
“Beautiful, aren’t they?” Receiver sounds awed,
admiring.
“I didn’t take you for an animal lover.”
“In the absence of humans, they have reclaimed what
once was theirs. Poetic.”
Yes, all of this is poetic in a dark sort of way.
Destruction and an end to life as these people had known it, yet still life is
thriving. The Silence isn’t truly silence, not as I have been led to believe.
This world isn’t empty. For the lack of humans, it seems all the more full. I
have never seen so many birds, and the squirrels carry conversations with
dozens of participants. And I won’t forget the family herd of deer anytime soon,
wandering gracefully across the grass. The fawn prances about between its older
siblings, biting playfully at their tails and making them chase him away.
I almost like this world. We had arisen and now we
were gone, and a new generation had begun.
Hours pass. Morning turns to afternoon, and already
the sky darkens. Aside from an occasional comment from Receiver, I am left to
my own devices. I am growing cold and beginning to be hungry, but my first
supply to Enter into this world isn’t scheduled until tonight. I will have to
bear the discomfort, which is easy enough as I am enjoying myself.
And then the birds stop singing.
I stop where I stand, my heart fluttering. I listen,
searching for something to tell me what has gone wrong, but then I understand.
I touch my ear. “Receiver.”
“Monitor answers. “We hear it. Or, don’t hear it. This
isn’t a good sign. Get in cover. Now.”
I turn. The front porch of the
nearest house has collapsed but the door is still accessible but before I even move,
a shadow shifts in the doorway, lunging in my direction.
I cry out and now the birds are chirping again, echoing
my alarm. Wings beat and small bodies take to the sky.
The dark shape stops a few feet away and I clamp one
hand over my heart to keep it from following the birds. It’s only a dog, a black Labrador with
friendly eyes. His tail wags uncertainly, or perhaps I should say tails, as he
has two of them. His muzzle twists up at one side, teeth protruding at odd
angles, and hard tumors bulge from his left shoulder.
The ground heaves, roiling, and my thoughts break as
the dog throws himself inside his den, seeking shelter. I stumble, grabbing at
the grass, trying to catch myself, but then the world bucks again and the lawn
rushes up to meet me. Leaves crunch under my body. Something heavier falls in
the distance, and then right nearby. I can’t breathe. I can’t get up. Something
groans terribly and I think it might be the earth itself.
And then, only stillness. A few distant shrieks from
alarmed birds, sharing the news of what happened. Panting, I push myself to my
knees and try to stand.
“B-9412! Are you okay?” Monitor sounds truly panicked
and that fills me with affection for him, that he cares so much. Maybe we’re
more than just a team in name, after all.
“B-9412!” Receiver chimes in. “We see you standing.
Did you hit your head? Is anything broken?”
The intensity of my own emotion surprises me, carried
on tsunamis of adrenaline. The air feels too cold and I shiver. The trees look
too sharp around the edges, branches like knives.
“I’m okay,” I reply. “Just shaken.”
“Can you continue? We can pull you out…”
That’s not necessarily true. Forming Entryways is such
a complicated business that they must be programmed far in advance, scheduled
rigorously. And, sending is not the same as leaving. I can’t just walk through
the Entryway when they send my dinner, unless I want to turn inside out.
I shake my head even though it must be disorienting
for my team to experience such a thing through my eyes. “I wouldn’t let such a
small thing stop me.”
“Good,” Receiver says. He sounds relieved. “Continue
on but be careful. That may not be the last of it.”
Almost as soon as he finished speaking, I realize that
the pounding I’ve been hearing this entire time isn’t my heartbeat echoing in
my ears. It’s coming from somewhere else, and the ground starts to move again
underneath my feet. This time, it isn’t wrenching up and down. It’s shaking,
like me.
The trees rattle overhead and the few birds that
settled down from before take to the skies again. Squirrels on the ground now
flee back into their trees, clinging to the branches. The warning is clear. Get
out of the way and fast.
But I can’t escape from something that I don’t even
understand.
The sound beats, a cadence, produced not by one thing
but by many all at once. It reverberates across the sky, propelled through the
emptiness. I cry out again into the Silence as I see something coming my way
from back at the end of the street. It’s the deer again, dozens of them,
hundreds, a bounding mass of lithe flesh and muscle. Fur rubs against fur,
generating static, a brewing storm.
They thunder through the gaps between the houses, leaping
fences, trampling weeds. I am metal and they are lightning, descending jaggedly.
My team is silent. No voice commands me to do
anything. I am alone. I am alone, and there is nothing I can do but turn on my
heel and run as fast as I can away from them.
Everywhere I look, deer. They surround me, in front of
me, behind me, to my sides. There are no openings as they swamp me with their
numbers, blocking me from reaching a tree or throwing myself through a doorway.
Occasionally a hoof strikes my ankle or a firm flank brushes against my hip but
these animals are meant to be light on their feet and they do their best not to
collide with me. The noise is deafening, and the smell of animal and churned
dust fills my nostrils. Still they dash around me and I start to think I might outlast
this. As long as I keep running in a straight line, don’t make any sudden
changes, this enormous herd might fully bypass me and I will be okay.
And then something hits my head and I am on the
ground, battered by hooves, my shock-numbed body registering the pain and not
knowing what to do with it. The world is nothing. Darkness and pain, felt and
not felt, and jagged concrete digging into me from beneath. I curl into a ball
and wait for it all to end.
Until I am dead, or there are no more deer.
I don’t know how long it takes; maybe I’m not
immediately aware of when it ends. The numbness gradually drains from my body,
sensations filtering back in. The dust settles. The birds settle. Everything
settles. The birds sing again, and at some point a small animal runs over my shin.
Even minimal pressure hurts and I groan. My head aches, mostly along my right
ear.
I need to report in. I hurt. For all my bravado, I
don’t think that I am going to be able to stay here after this.
I raise my finger to my ear, encountering heavy,
sticky wetness. A gash curves from my earlobe, flesh torn shallowly for several
inches along my skull. Blood soaks my hair, cools rapidly on my neck.
I can’t find my microphone. Judging by all the blood
and the fact that my ear feels like it has been torn in two, it must have been
an antler tine that did it.
“Receiver?” I say, then hold my breath. If he
responds, if he is saying anything, I might be able to locate the microphone.
I can’t hear anything, though no doubt they can still
see through my eyes. They must have seen that I took a hit. If I make it clear
that I can’t hear, they might do something about it. There must be some sort of
emergency procedure in place for this.
There must be.
Very slowly, I put my hands on the ground and push
myself to my knees. I look at my hand as I do so. It is scraped and battered
just like the rest of me, but there is simply too much blood to have come from those
abrasions alone. So, now they know I am injured.
The world wobbles a little around me but I don’t feel
like I have a concussion. I have gone through that and more, in training. Head
wounds bleed a lot anyway, no matter how small. My balance quickly evens out
and I am able to get up.
Metal glimmers in the leaves on the sidewalk but it is
the wrong shape for my microphone. The microphone works through the same sort
of process by which we create Entryways. Despite its sensitive nature, it is a
compact ball no larger than a marble. This metal in the grass is a cracked
acorn of a thing, split in half and simultaneously gutted.
I stare, my mouth slightly open. Who knows how
expensive these devices are, how difficult they are to create? And this one has
been completely destroyed, as useless to us as these abandoned houses, just a
husk of its former self. They must be seeing it. All of them. They will act on
it when they can. Won’t they?
I don’t know what to do in this situation. This wasn’t
covered in my training or in any of the simulations. I can’t hear my team. They
can’t guide me. Am I to wait this out until help arrives or am I to go on as
normal?
Perhaps it all depends on me.
I look down at myself, trying to assess how hurt I
really am. Everything aches and my left ankle feels a hot and swollen, but it
holds my weight well enough. I don’t seem to be having any difficulty moving my
arms or legs in general, and the bleeding from my ear should stop eventually. I’m
sure it will.
I continue my patrol of the neighborhood as if nothing
has happened. I start to limp as the streets go by, but I do it still. I
explore the houses that I can, the yards, and I make sure to scan the areas as
smoothly as possible.
My ear starts throbbing, then feels hot. My shirt
collar dampens with blood. Animals avoid me, scenting copper. I am vastly
uncomfortable, the temperature dropping. The gray, overcast sky gains a
distinctly rose tinge.
All I can do is keep going.
The unusual lumps in the park reveal themselves to be
the overgrown remnants of picnic tables and bleachers. I hesitate after making
this discovery, wondering at the reason that I feel so absent. Hunger, perhaps.
Or maybe shock.
The sky is already growing too dark for normal
twilight as I set out from the park, heading to the next sector of the
neighborhood. Storm clouds gather in thick clumps, black as ink, black as
night.
I am not looking where I am going and I end up walking
by my destination, facing out towards a field past the neighborhood, a gradual
downward slope that follows the highway. And past the field, nothing.
A mile out from where I stand, the fields and highway end
in an enormous barren stretch of gray dirt that encompasses a circumference the
likes of which I can’t comprehend, mainly because I can’t see the borders.
There is nothing. No husks or remnants of anything. No new plants have moved in
to make their home in that barren soil. It is Silence given form.
It deserves recording. I have, after all, decided to
do my job until I am pulled out of here. I must trust in my team, and I must
give them reason to continue trusting in me.
Limping, I walk down through the field of weeds in the
direction of the colossal circle.
A black rain begins to fall, and night continues to
approach. I fall back on my training, reciting a report to myself.
Current status: Uncertain.
Location: Trenton.
Date: Unknown.
The End
©2018 Emily Blue
